Posted on 09/03/2005 6:36:23 PM PDT by A. Pole
Efforts to drain New Orleans hit another snag Friday as the Army Corps of Engineers discovered that it could not buy new pumps to replace those damaged by the flooding.
Massive pumps capable of draining the city like those that have been keeping New Orleans dry for decades are no longer made and would have to be specially ordered, a process that would take too long, said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the senior corps official in New Orleans.
Instead, repair crews will have to dry out the existing pumps, which could take up to a week, before repairing them with replacement motors and parts and begin pumping water back into Lake Pontchartrain. The repair job could prolong efforts to drain the city, about 80% of which is submerged.
"These pumps are so big, you can't buy them off the shelf. You have to make them, and we don't have time for that," said Wagenaar, who spent about an hour Friday escorting President Bush around the levee damage at the 17th Street Canal.
The city, much of which is below sea level, relies on a network of 22 pumps to keep water out. Army engineers now believe eight pumps are underwater.
The latest wrinkle illustrated the enormous complexity of draining the city, which for more than 200 years had gradually built up an elaborate system to keep itself dry.
Even with the setback, Wagenaar said, the city could be drained in three to six months, mainly because engineers may finally be able to get to the largest pump station, at the end of the 17th Street Canal, as early as today.
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Another buggy whip industry gone!
Just damn. What do mayors of NO do...?! Ride the Bacchus crewe at Mardi Gras, I guess...
Another example by the great local planning in New Orleans.
don't believe it. there are some pretty big pumps around. anyway, the submerged pumps are probably fine -- it's the powerplants that are shot. and there are plenty of big powerplants around.
Another thing to blame on President Bush....NOT!!!!!
interesting thread. Geraldo was just on FNC with the army corps guy - they are fabricating portable pumps at a foundary someplace near NO. but of the main city pumps, the Corps claims all but one work.
Get those lazy good for nothing people that sit on there ass all day and collect welfare money from taxpayers and form a bucket birgade
Supposedly Gov. Edwards bought replacement pumps but they were never installed and are in a warehouse somewhere, because one of his cronies was billing the city for storage costs . . .
yes, but they have to get huge diesel generators out to the pumping stations.
that sucks.
these could be the pumps Geraldo was talking about.
CROCK!!! There might not be direct replacement pumps, but there are lots of other "pumping means" available. In one (much smaller) flooding crisis, the Corps of Engineers even went so far as to call out (rent) the heavy tractors of farmers, and hook them up to portable pumps. I know it happened, as I watched it go on.
Screw it just change the name from New Orleans to New Atlantis and be done with it
All they have to do is contact one of the Big Six natural gas pipelines, offer a contract, and they might have their pumps on line in about 3 days. (They might even do for free to get their own logistics networks up and running. Might even end up with Solarz turbines. If the fittings don't exist, call their contacts in the steel industry and tooling concerns in Houston and Pennsylvania. Even quicker ways of doing this now there's industrial automation, but those are the industries past tooled up to get these things done.
For all those investment bankers who don't think it's important for corporate leadership to have had any hands-on experience in building the infrastructure companies, this is a prime example of why corporate raiding has destroyed a sizable amount of US robustness in industry.
You know, a million Chinese would probably have this part of the problem over with in a couple, three days.
do you realize the capacity needed here, to empty this many acres?
I wonder if they've searched Ritchie Bros.
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